Fetal Ovary Transplant Is Envisioned

By GINA KOLATA

Published: January 6, 1994

A scientist in Edinburgh has set off an international furor by suggesting that it might soon be feasible to transplant ovaries from aborted fetuses into infertile women who do not make viable eggs of their own.

Dr. Roger Gosden, a researcher at Edinburgh University, said in a telephone interview yesterday that he had already accomplished this in mice. He took ovaries from mouse fetuses, transplanted them into adult mice and showed that the ovaries produced eggs that could be fertilized and then could develop into normal mice.

He also said that it might be possible to do the same thing in humans in three years but that he wanted a full discussion of the proposal before any efforts were made to carry it out.

In Britain, Health Secretary Virginia Bottomsley, responding to widespread reports there and in the United States that Dr. Gosden had proposed performing in-vitro procedures with eggs from aborted fetuses, said the Government's national health program would not pay for that effort. The ethics committee of the British Medical Association is preparing a report on Dr. Gosden's proposal for ovary transplants.

In the United States Federal regulations would not prevent such a procedure from being carried out. It would be up to researchers and institutions to decide whether such work was ethical. Seeking Boundaries

Some ethicists say reproductive technology may finally have gone too far. The idea of implanting an ovary from an aborted fetus, whether it proves feasible in human beings or not, raises questions about the extent to which science should intervene to help infertile couples.

"The idea is so grotesque as to be unbelievable," said George Annas, a lawyer and ethicist at Boston University. Mr. Annas said that he did not object to using fetal tissue to treat devastating diseases, like Parkinson's disease, but that an ovary was different from other tissue. Its eggs contain genetic material that will affect the next generation.

Others say the benefits to infertile couples could outweigh the ethical questions.

"If you take a more adventuresome and experimentalist approach and don't try to stamp it out before it gets started, you have a chance to see if it does more harm than good," said Dr. John Fletcher, an ethicist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Motive for Research

Dr. Gosden said the research on fetal ovaries grew out of his desire to help infertile women.

A 10-week-old female fetus has already made all its eggs, about six million to seven million, he said. If a fetal ovary is implanted into a woman, the ovary grows to adult size over a period that has yet to be determined. After that the eggs mature naturally. The procedure would allow a woman to become pregnant without using eggs donated by another woman, a procedure that involves fertilization in the laboratory and implantation in the uterus.

Egg donors are in short supply in the United States, infertility experts said. The donor must inject herself with hormones and come in frequently for medical examinations before the egg matures and is removed by aspiration with a needle through the skin. Donors are even scarcer in Britain, Dr. Gosden said, because donors are not paid. Dr. Gosden said it was possible that women's immune systems would reject fetal ovaries. But fetal tissue has been tolerated by adults in other procedures.

Dr. John Buster, the director of reproductive endocrinology at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine, said he understood the motivation for the research. Thorny Ethical Issues

"You start by looking at the fact that getting a source of eggs is difficult, so you start looking at all the potential sites," he said. "In the eyes of some, the fetus is another source.

"The ethical issues are quite thorny. You carry the whole burden of the circumstances of how you obtained that tissue, and that is a problem."

Reproductive technology has already provoked an outcry in the United Sates and abroad. When several women who were past menopause announced last week that they had used donated eggs to become pregnant, France and Italy proposed that such pregnancies be banned. And, several months ago, when researchers at George Washington University announced that they had cloned human embryos, ethicists and the public reacted with outrage and dismay.

"These are major mutations, if you will, in public morality," Dr. Fletcher said. Idea Called Offensive

Mr. Annas, who said he found the idea of using fetal ovaries offensive, said: "Should we be creating children whose mother is a dead fetus? What do you tell a child? Your mother had to die so you could exist." Using fetal ovaries also creates grandmothers who were never mothers, he said, a further upset to what society views as the natural order of generations. "It is one thing to want to have a child, but there are limits," he said.

Dr. Arthur Caplan, an ethicist at the University of Minnesota, who issued a favorable report on fetal tissue research in 1990, agreed with Mr. Annas about Dr. Gosden's proposed research.